GW Lightning Arc – SIDESTORIES – Shells
Fandom: GW AC
Characters: Zechs, Lucrezia
Warnings: References to male-male affection.
Summary: Zechs and Lucrezia trying to find out the meaning of home.
xxx
Autumn had closed in fast. The meadows swayed like a yellow sea under the icy wind that swept down from the North, and broad swathes of the forest shimmered bright golden and copper where the first night frosts had coloured birch, beech and lark.
Zechs spent days on horseback, his saddlebags filled with basic provisions no better than army rations, and he slept outside, under the trees, or under the wide, open sky. He didn't bother building a shelter or making a fire. He got cold and wet and dry again. His boots and clothes were encrusted with mud. Once he wandered along the riverbank, his horse plodding after him while he watched the current, swollen with rainfall further upstream. The half-sunk fibreglass hull of a small boat peeked from the thick reeds. He went to examine it but there was a large hole in the bottom, needing more repairs than he could do with his basic toolkit, and he left it. He sat nearby for a while, angling with a hook and a line, and caught a few fish that he gutted and threaded on a piece of wire. He ate some of the fish raw with a chunk of hardtack while walking on and hoped the rest would keep until he could stomach more of the slippery, muddy-sweet flesh.
Soon he felt like the only man on Earth.
Alone, alone, with the entire, empty Universe around him.
xxx
The surge of Zero woke him. Dawn was only just on the horizon, on the far side of the river's broad back, and he could feel the chill of the autumn night even through his down-and-foil sleeping bag. His horse was sleepily scraping against the bark of the tall firtree under which he had sheltered. It snorted softly, its breath coming in thick white clouds, as he peeled himself out of the dirty bag.
He could hear it in the distance – the deep, choppy growling of a jeep making its way across one of the few deeply rutted tracks that cut across the wilderness. By instinct, he touched the sidearm in his shoulder holster even as he crept towards the edge of the forest to scan the dark landscape. In the distance the river lay like a leaden band, deceptively solid-looking, its breathing like the heaving of a giant chest.
The twin-beam of undimmed headlights fingered through the darkness. He thought that nobody would have travelled far in a jeep and that the vehicle might have been borrowed from the airstrip hidden deep in the estate's woodlands. There weren't many people who would be allowed to land there by the small staff of ground control and engineers, all ex-military, discharged, demobilised for one reason or other, or deserted rather than facing accusations of war-crimes after the world fell apart around them. Hand-picked by Treize, they remained faithful, attached to this tiny base in the heart of the Russian wilderness, with no career prospects and hardly any interruptions to the monotony of duty rotas.
He swore quietly and went to pack his gear away. In a few moments he was ready, untying the hobbled horse and reaching for the bridle.
xxx
Staying near the fringe of the woods, careful not to show himself just yet, he followed the jeep for a few more miles, amused at its tortuously slow progress across the rough ground, and somewhere between annoyed and resigned at the persistency of its driver. When dawn spilled cold white light across the cloudy sky, he raised the binoculars he wore on a strap around his neck. He disliked the issue ones that offered perfect night vision but now he cursed himself for having left them at the house – a miscalculation that had cost him an anxious hour hidden in the trees.
He was not surprised at what he saw.
xxx
He slammed his fist against the sideplank of the jeep before showing his face through the window.
"You look like a wild thing," Lucrezia said dryly. She was muffled up in her Preventers winter uniform. She had never been able to get used to the cold, and her cheeks and nose, peeking out from the padded collar, were flushed red.
"I didn't see the jet arriving."
"I gathered that."
"How on earth did you find me? Am I tagged or what?"
"No, but your house is in uproar, people wringing their hands and wailing about what should happen, now that you had finally abandoned everything and gone to the wolves."
He stared at her mistrustingly.
"Okay, I made up the bit with the wolves. I asked them where you usually spent your time, and then it was a matter of drawing quadrants on the map and searching." She knocked the paper, spread on the passenger seat, with her woolly-mittened knuckles. And there he saw, drawn with a red pencil, a web of lines, dividing the large-scale map into sections, annotated with co-ordinates, a compass sitting near where the line of the river cut through. "Can we go back? It's so damn cold here."
xxx
He made a fire in the drawing room before he went to wash and change. Someone had started heating the steambath in the washhouse outside. The air smelled of woodsmoke, overripe apples and damp ashes.
Lucrezia crouched by the hearth, holding her palms out against the warmth of the flames. There was a speck of soot on her cheek. She looked tanned and wiry, full of energy and life. Zechs sat down. The always-present vodka bottle stood on the dirty tablecloth that hadn't been changed in weeks.
"I asked for something warm to eat," Lucrezia said, rising to her feet.
"I'm not hungry."
"You look like you haven't eaten anything decent in days."
He shrugged.
"Une sends you her regards."
He raised his eyebrows. "Really. How does she know I'm here?"
Lucrezia smiled. "It's easy to guess?"
He bit his lip. "Right. Then why isn't the place crawling... ah."
"You still have good friends in high places." Lucrezia sat down opposite him, the empty table between them like a battle field, or an empty sheet of paper.
"Does that mean she didn't like my resignation?"
"She asks that you think it over once more. Take some more time." A small pause, then, "Don't you want to go home?"
He folded his arms. "I am home."
"You know what I mean."
"I've asked for the place to be revamped. I have plans, and I got quotes. I'm getting a few contractors in to help. You were right, people get sloppy if you let them."
Lucrezia said nothing. Zechs reached for the bottle and turned it in his hands without twisting the cap.
"I'm sending all that stuff to storage. I'm having the house repainted, inside and out. I've let most of the land and the stables to tenants, and I've got a contract with the Church for managing the woods."
Lucrezia looked at him, surprised and questioning. "I thought..."
He gave her a half-smile. "Where would I go? To Sanc, where my sister is? She's fine without me, and what's there now, it's changed. It isn't home anymore. To Mars? I'd hate having to stay up there, or on one of the colonies. I hate feeling like an exile."
"And here? Aren't you an exile here?"
He shook his head. "Expat, maybe. But I'll be a good expat. Here..." He swallowed hard, then opened the bottle and poured a slug of the sharp stuff into the sticky tumbler next to it. "I loved my parents. I love my sister. But this – it's different. Everything I loved most is here."
"You think you owe him?"
Zechs drank deeply, then set the glass back with a hard clonk. "I haven't got a clue."
xxx
He had gone to the steambath to soak in the aromatic heat that filled the small wooden room, the packed earth floor covered with rushes and fir fronds, bundles of thin, elastic birch twigs sitting in a stack on the wooden bench along one side of the room. He had taken the bottle with him, and by the time Lucrezia stepped in, he was a long way from being sober.
Startled, he stared at her. She wore nothing, and when she sat down next to him, he blushed fiercely. She laughed at him, and then she wrapped her arms around him and kissed him.
Bitter. Sweet. Salty. For a heartbeat or two, something inside him surged, he soared to the cusp, teetering there for a small eternity – and then he fell, fell, fell, crumbling, imploding, in devastating totality. It overwhelmed him completely.
Lucrezia held him, his face pressed against her shoulder, and didn't dare to move.
"He's dead..."
He was clutching her upper arms, his grip like a vice, bruising her, and it hit her that he might be flying high with Zero strumming in his mind. Fear brushed her mind, for the fraction of a second it filled her with panic, but then she fought it down.
"You're hurting me," she said softly.
He tensed, looking up. She saw the face of a stranger, recognition seeping into its gaze that was blurred with drink. And then a smile, the saddest smile she'd ever seen, curved his lips as he drew back and pulled himself up.
"I'm sorry."
xxx
She found him, fast asleep, in Treize's room. Zechs was lying on the bare bed, his unclothed body barely covered with the sheet that was half-pulled off the mattress. The room had been stripped of its books and shelves, the carpet, pictures and chair. Lucrezia stopped on the threshold. She had never set foot in there, and it didn't seem right now. But she saw that the desk was still there although covered with another dusty sheet. From beneath its folds peeked the chewed pencil.
xxx
"I don't think I'm fit for active service," he said when they sat over a late breakfast the next morning. The day was grey, heavy with the promise of rain. The drawing room was filled with the aroma of freshly brewed coffee and stale ashes, floorpolish and cold tea.
Lucrezia shook her head. "Perhaps you just need-"
"I'm tired of people telling me what I need," he cut in, his tone quiet.
Even from across the table she could smell the pong of alcohol on his breath. She bit her lip. "Right."
"I need to get back to something real," he said. "I want to."
"Okay..."
"I want Une to accept my resignation."
Lucrezia stuck a small, ornate silver tea spoon into her cup of coffee and stirred it. There was no need – she took her coffee black. For a few moments, the clinking of the spoon in the porcelain cup was the only sound in the drawing room.
"He tried to resign once," Zechs said, leaning forward so he could touch her wrist.
Lucrezia looked up, her eyes lit by a spark of interest. "Really?"
Zechs settled back again. "Sort of..."
xxx
"Where is the car?" Treize sounded impatient and nervy as he tried to tug on the white ceremonial silk gloves that completed his dress uniform. He was getting ready to attend a function at which he would suffer the Foundation men's patronising, the empty garbage spewed by politicians that wanted to win the next election, and the unashamed courting by some of women in attendance, sometimes encouraged by their men. A necessity, he had once said, smiling at Zechs who glared at him darkly, something you don't waste time struggling against...
"You asked for it to be delivered at 2100 hours. Three minutes to go."
The right glove on, Treize pulled at the cuff of the left. With a grinding sound, the stitching along the ball of his thumb gave way, opening a small tear in the seam. He swore, teeth gritted, and tore the glove off
"Nobody would have seen that," Zechs said, pulling a plastic wrapper with a spare pair from his pocket.
Treize shook his head. "What about you?"
"I have mine."
"Oh." Treize looked at him, studying, curious, and then he smiled, the lightness of his expression contrasting with the tautness of his posture. "You know me too well."
"Do I?" Zechs opened the wrapper. "Let me, or you'll tear this one too, you'll be pissed off, and we'll never get to kiss all those fat old ladies that love you so much."
Treize let it go, watching him ease the glove onto his hand, over rough skin, worn from weapons drill, field training, and hours of physical exercise in the regimental fitness suite. Zechs smoothed the cuff of the uniform tunic and the fancy, incredibly old-fashioned frills of the shirt sleeve underneath so that they lay perfectly against Treize's wrist.
"There. You need your boots licked? No? Fine. You're done, all dressed up, like a horse on parade." He stepped back, a mirthless half-smile on his lips. "They will love it."
"You don't?"
"You look idiotic in that kind of gear."
Treize whistled through his teeth. "What crawled up yours and died there?"
"You don't give me what I'm asking for. You never do," Zechs accused, clutching his dress sabre as if to break it. It was against regulations to wear a honed blade, but he did it anyway, a silent, childish act of rebellion, unnoticed because he knew nobody would inspect Treize's closest adjutants. Yet to him it was enough to know it was there.
"I'm trying." Treize paused, then made an obscene gesture with his right hand. "Or is it this? Want me to rip your pants down? Where, here? Now?"
"You-" Zechs broke off, feeling his pulse hammering in his temples. He felt hot and flushed, short of losing it.
And then Treize shook his head and pinched the the root of his nose. "Jesus, what am I saying?" He sat down and opened the top drawer of his desk from which he took an unsealed envelope. "Very well. This is what you asked for." He pushed the envelope towards Zechs with a swift, precise motion. "Take it to the Defence Council. You realise it's going to finish your career, too."
Zechs stared at him. "Thanks for reminding me."
"You know I didn't mean it like that."
Zechs took the letter, slid the single folded sheet out of its envelope and read in silence. It was signed but not dated. He placed it on the table. Without another word, Treize took a plain ballpoint pen from the drawer and scrawled the date onto the paper. He looked pale and worn, but he smiled when he glanced up. "That's it."
xxx
"It's the closest he ever came to doing it," Zechs said, rolling small balls out of the slice of soft bread on his plate.
Lucrezia wrapped her hands around her cup. "What happened?"
"I took the letter... and then I chickened out. I never delivered it. He left for the function without me, and I spent half the night wandering around the compound, pretending to carry out a security inspection. In the end I turned around like a beat puppy and gave the letter back to him. I think he knew all along I'd not do it."
She shook her head. "Bastard."
Zechs smiled thinly. "He never was quite fair."
"Why did you do it?"
There was a long break, with only the rustling of the fire to seep into the stillness of the room. It got warmer, only the floor stayed cold in spite of the thick carpet.
Zechs raised is cup and finished his coffee in one long gulp, then wiped his mouth and got up. "It wouldn't have been him anymore, plodding along on the estate and tuning out the rest of the world. It would have made him old."
xxx
"We could do something nice," he said later that day, while they both were looking at his plans for the estate.
"Like what?"
"How about going to Moscow? Maybe later in the year, visit the theatre, go to the ballet? Or Petrograd, we could wander around in the Winter Palace for hours, looking at the galleries..."
"Isn't it hard to get tickets?"
"Not if I ask for them." He paused, glancing at her. "I've had invitations. Never knew what to do with them, but now... "
She laughed.
He blushed, anger flaring in his gaze. "What's funny?"
"I'd feel odd in a fancy dress."
"You didn't when you went out with that French lieutenant."
She laid her had back and groaned. "Jesus, isn't there a shred of privacy anywhere on Mars?"
"No."
"He's funny."
"You can say that again."
"He's bright, too."
"He's no match for you."
"We had tons of fun. I couldn't get over his accent, and he thought I should let my hair down until he realised it's clipped."
Zechs said nothing.
Lucrezia studied him, a spark of amusement in her eyes. "What's wrong with it?"
"He's a lieutenant. How many ranks is that below yours?"
"It's a different force, you know that. How did you hear about it anyway?"
"He isn't the discreet type."
"Ah. He was bragging?" She shrugged. "Well, it's flattering, in a way."
There was a tiny break, before Zechs got up. "I need some air."
Lucrezia rose, too, her hands clenching lightly. "What's it to you? I can't have you; I know that, I understand. I can't be him. But I have a life, too. Or is this a problem? Are you judging me?"
Zechs looked at her, then broke away, cheeks reddening. "No. I'm sorry."
"Quit apologising." She pushed her chair back. "It was my fault, I shouldn't have pestered you in the sauna. I won't do it again."
He shook his head. "I'm just... it was uncomfortable to hear them talk about you like that. I wanted to hit that idiot, but he left before I could finish my drink."
"Always get your priorities right." The words slipped before she could swallow them, and she blushed in anger.
Zechs met her gaze. His expression was calm, all turmoil gone. "Yes," he said. "I'm working on it."
xxx
"Did you ever... I mean, there are always rumours on base, but-"
Zechs shot her a sideways glance. "And when would we have had time for that?"
Lucrezia slid her hand over the row of dresses that, covered in silk paper and scented with moth-repelling cedar blocks, hung on a rack in a huge, carved cupboard with five doors, the middle one with a floor-to ceiling bevelled mirror. They were in Madame Khushrenada's bedroom, with most of the things already packed and stowed away, only the cupboard and the bedstead remained because they were too large to pass through the door and the workmen had not had time to dismantle them yet.
Turning, Lucrezia nodded at an oil-painting, half-covered in white cloth, that leaned against the wall by the window. "Is that her?"
An aquiline looking woman, tall and wiry, with pale-golden skin and black hair. Her eyes, dark and barely noticeably slanted, looked straight out of the picture. She wore a sable cloak, pinned with a large ruby brooch over her left shoulder, and her hair was done up and fixed with a heavily embroidered band, strands of gold and pearls streaming from behind her ears down to her shoulders.
"Looks... wild," Lucrezia said.
"Local nobility," Zechs said. "You wouldn't want to have crossed her."
"And you?"
He gave her a smile. "Me neither."
The silk paper rustled softly under her fingers. "Fancy clothes..." At the bottom of the cupboard, among high-heeled shoes, lay a flat box. She pulled it out and opened it. "Look..."
Madame Khushrenada, seated in a troika, the reins firmly in her hands; her husband on horseback behind her. She looked into the camera unsmilingly, he sat straight as an arrow, in his dress uniform, his wheat-blond hair peering out from underneath the cap.
Zechs leaned over Lucrezia's shoulder. "I think it's their wedding picture."
"Funny she should hide it like that."
"After he was gone, she spent days burning papers and other stuff."
"Wasn't he courtmartialled?"
"He was lost in action before they got round to it."
"And Treize?"
Zechs sat down on the edge of the bed. "Why don't you try on one of those dresses? Someone's offered me cards for a Bolshoy performance."
xxx
It was much later that Zechs heard Lucrezia's steps on the grand staircase. The carpet had been rolled up and stood in a corner of the vestibule, and her shoes clacked on the bare wood. He scraped some ash away from the fire and stoked it lightly before putting on a new birch log. He watched the silky white bark catch fire, small blue flames rising, filling the space around him with the thick aroma of the forest in summer.
"I'm not sure," Lucrezia said from the threshold. She wore black, a long silk dress with a high neck and no sleeves. Her Preventer dog tags dangled on her chest.
Zechs turned and smiled. "It's perfect."
"I feel like a fake."
"I don't care what you wear."
"Wow. Thanks for the compliment."
He frowned. "You know what I meant. If it makes you feel more comfortable to wear your uniform..."
"I think I'm just not used to fancy gear anymore." She went to crouch next to him and kissed his nose before he could sway away. "You got soot all over your face."
"Soot?" He scrubbed with the back of his hand.
Lucrezia took a handkerchief from underneath her left shoulderstrap and gave it to him.
He turned in his hands without unfolding it. "There was one time when..."
She tilted her head as she sat down on the rug in front of the hearth, the warmth of the growing fire pleasant after the chill of the upper floor. "Yes?"
Zechs went to get the bottle that was almost empty, and sat down next to her. "Want some?"
She took a large swig, and he seized the bottle back before she could finish it. "I managed to catch him out. He was in between adjutants – we had moved into new quarters, he hadn't yet bothered with the red tape stuff, and I'd been away to test a few tweaks on the Zero system. He was complaining, so I had a go at him..."
xxx
"Why do you need an adjutant anyway? To wipe your ass?"
Treize seemed amused. "Do you want to polish my boots?"
Zechs stared at him. There was a small, grating break before he spat, "Why not."
Before Treize could reply, Zechs kneeled, took the brush and slathered on some sootblack polish. Opened Treize's button fly. Blackened his boots carefully, every crease. Tugged aside his underpants. Waiting for the polish to dry, he swallowed, the warmth of Treize's flesh, his scent, the damp, wanton familiarity at once soothing and exciting. It didn't take long until Treize, tired or not, threw back his head and bit back a groan. Zechs groped for the shining brush and began to gloss Treize's boots, never stopping what he was doing with his mouth. He took a rag from the shoebox and rubbed it over the boots to finish them off, and then he pushed Treize's knees apart and grabbed his hips. It was rough and fast, as if to suck the life out of him, and when it was over, Zechs tidied up the shoe box and straightened Treize's clothes.
Treize, slightly out of breath and flushed down to his collar, got up as if stung. "This was totally..."
Zechs got up. "What? I polished your boots. That's all."
Treize's adam's apple bobbed, and then he said, "Thank you. Then that would be all." It sounded cool and formal, and when he sat down behind his desk and started sifting through his paperwork, Zechs knew he would never mention the incident again.
xxx
"All I had to show for it was shoe polish on my face." He took a draught from the bottle. The tepid vodka ran like fire down his throat. "When the offical notification letter came, to confirm that his father was gone, he disappeared. I took one of the ponies and found him by the river, swimming so far out I could hardly see him. I waded in and nearly drowned. In the end, he dragged me back out and rubbed me warm. That's when he first did it. Sucking me off."
"Ah." Lucrezia let her head loll back, her cheeks red from the heat and the alcohol and perhaps from something else entirely.
Zechs glanced at her. "Sorry, I shouldn't..."
She laughed. "Go on."
He snorted softly. "We spent so much time in uniform and so little together. I couldn't get enough, but he... he was always on edge. From three times a day to once a month if we were lucky, and only after he'd made me his aide du camp. Everyone wanted a piece of him. He'd been right – I shouldn't have enlisted."
She rolled her shoulders. "If you hadn't, you'd not have seen him again after he left this place."
Her words sunk into Zechs' mind like ice. In the sudden stillness, she glanced at him, and then she knelt and pressed her hand over her mouth. "I'm sorry," she whispered, her voice rough and muffled. "I'm so sorry..."
xxx
She slept in the room that once had belonged to Treize's father and now contained only a camp bed, her backpack, and a washstand with pitcher and bowl. It was the room farthest away from those Zechs and Treize had occupied.
When she came downstairs the next morning, the house felt dirty and unhospitable. A few boxes and bags with packed items were scattered across the hallways and vestibule. Nobody was in the kitchen, and the fire had gone out.
From the library drifted music. A song, in Russian, the singer pleading with a nightingale not to wake the sleeping soldiers. On the table in the drawing room lay a note in Zechs' large, bold hand, and the two tickets he had mentioned. She slung the backpack over her shoulder and read.
"I lied. The Frenchman seems cool. He wanted to hit me for telling him to leave you alone or I'd fuck his ass raw. Take him to the Bolshoy – you know you'll be fine if he likes it." Lucrezia folded the note and the tickets and pushed them into the chest pocket of her uniform. She bent to fix the lacing of her boots, then thought it over and pulled the note out again. She laid it on the table and on the back she wrote, "He won't." She put one of the tickets next to it.
xxx
THE END
Music: youtube - Nightingales (Soviet Army Choir)